


And a Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart as Well..

by Nazareth_Rose



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gone Wrong Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nazareth_Rose/pseuds/Nazareth_Rose
Summary: (This story is about this Gone Wrong AU comic- https://spudinacup.tumblr.com/SUAUGoneWrong- by Spudinacup. It was by far the most emotionally gripping one in her series that I’ve read so far, and there simply wasn’t any way I couldn’t write a story about it. Okay, I might have been a little hypocritical there. I did ask her permission first.I hope you enjoy!)
Kudos: 11





	And a Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart as Well..

**Author's Note:**

> (This story is about this Gone Wrong AU comic- https://spudinacup.tumblr.com/SUAUGoneWrong  
> \- by Spudinacup. It was by far the most emotionally gripping one in her series that I’ve read so far, and there simply wasn’t any way I couldn’t write a story about it. Okay, I might have been a little hypocritical there. I did ask her permission first.  
> I hope you enjoy!)

It was a cold, still evening when it happened.  
In the times that he was alone and his son was out on missions with the Gems he’d come to know and love over the decades, he’d think of it happening. And he thought that if it ever did happen, God forbid, it would be a little more eventful. He was Steven, after all. His Steven. Not Stephen from the gravelly Bible his parents had forced down his throat for the first twenty years of his life...even his death had been met with God Himself coming down from Heaven. If it happening to his Steven didn’t influence the cosmos, didn’t turn his world like the throaty particles of sand trapped and tumbling inside the Maryland waves, then what would?  
It happening to Rose did. That, more than anything, was the defining feature to his life past his twentieth birthday or so. At first, it was confined in the world of him screaming to tame what had erupted inside of him, or resolving a small dispute between the Gems or two. But after the first six months, the whole world, and the world where she'd come from, had exploded upon the weight of his baby boy's shoulders. Not his boy. His and Rose's boy. Rose was undoubtedly what he functioned from, but he was still their boy.  
But Rose had made one mistake too many this time. Steven had spent years wrenching his body and his heart to fix them. Each and every corrupted Gem had leeched an ounce of his childhood away, and Greg had been forced to the safety of the carwash, of the small house he'd purchased nearby. Forbidden to see the eyes and the smile of his own son while three women who weren't the least related to him were left to their own devices on what to do with them. But this time, Rose had made one mistake too many. One of her first. Before she corrupted any of those Gems, before she had started a war that killed millions of women, had left much of the survivors broken. The worst of the broken ones became catatonic as soon as they heard the sound of glass breaking, it being all too reminiscent of the sounds of a gemstone shattering.  
If he had paid attention once Spinel had come down, he would've heard that sound. And he would know the hel that all of these women knew whenever anyone dropped a glass at a party.  
He'd condemned his son, he knew it. And he was execrable for it. Execrable for every mission that rushed by as Steven's twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, now sixteen year old brain was chipped away. He, beyond a shadow of a doubt, deserved every ounce of pain he could ever feel and could ever inflict upon himself, in any way his ruthlessly creative mind could be. But in this mission, where the Earth was in danger of being chipped away with a force abrupt enough to disintegrate his entire car wash in a matter of seconds, it'd been quick. All too quick. All too agonizing.  
Where was Greg on his seventeenth birthday? He was almost too numb to uproot the thought. That was back, much too far back. '89, '90? He'd forgotten. But it was sometime on the cusp of the decade, all the anachronisms mishmoshed from the two intersecting decades making it awkward even thirty years later. But all he knew was that he’d barely started taking lessons for the acoustic guitar, let alone electric. He was only now thinking of places to move should he gain independence from his parents sometime in the next ten years. He had a few girls in mind, but even with his newfound piercings and his hair well-kept down to his waist, he hadn’t the confidence to ask one of them to lend him a pencil. His life had barely begun then, even through, in many ways, he thought it was over. He’d always felt the dread then that came with adolescence when his parents had twisted his interests into that much of a heretical form, but always chased it away with some exhilarating fantasy of what would happen to him should his dreams be crushed. He’d be crushed by one of Deep Purple’s tour buses. He’d be popped by one or two from one of his bullies’ Brownings while he made his first performance onstage. If nothing else, he joked to himself, he’d die of a heart attack if his old man started screaming at him again when he practiced the guitar even quietly.  
And what had he been doing years later while Steven was screaming, screaming for help as almost half his blood left his body? He'd been practicing the guitar again, sitting and ready to reveal the song he'd composed that had been swirling in his mind for a decade and a half, taking its roots ten years or so after Rose died. Composing a song of how he felt towards Pearl. Towards Pearl. He didn’t know her condition. He had no right to, even when Bismuth or Lapis tried to warn him, went so far as to shake his shoulders and point out the ominous light coming from the beachfront as Pearl’s gem was in the first stages of reforming.  
He looked like an angel was the first thought that tore through his mind. Even when Bismuth was first carrying him in, even before he had any suspicion that he’d been anything more than knocked unconscious during the fight. But the blood. Oh, God, the blood would drive him to insanity. He knew there was a trail leading out the front door and walking its way around to the backyard, but he didn’t know when he was going to be in the slightest bit ready to face it.  
But all he had to do was face the look on his son’s face. If Steven had the slightest bit of sanity, Greg thought, he’d be judging him for what he’d done for the past four years. For having let his innocence be ripped from him, over and over, to let his body, his mind, arguably his soul undergo more trauma than Greg thought it was possible for an almost-seventeen year old to undergo. If Steven had the slightest bit of decency left in him, if he’d kept in mind any of the lessons he’d been taught by him or any of the Crystal Gems, he’d be trapped in impenetrable fury, take the newfound spikes he’d been learning to summon in secret for the past few days and sink them into him the same amount of times Spinel had sunk her scythe into him. But there was none of any of that on his face. He looked exhausted, the same way, Greg found himself thinking, he’d looked every morning for the past year or so. He found that the world pulled away from him, away from his head and away from his feet, trapping him in an hourglass covered in ink rather than the way he imagined it happening during those moments Steven was out on a mission, being ripped away from under his feet as if his newly-renovated hardwood floor was a two-dollar piece of carpet.  
“My boy” was all that was left to say. “Not my boy, not my boy, not my boy…”  
How was he supposed to get up from his seat? How was he supposed to leave from this, to bury him, to bury all of those almost-seventeen years of memories and eventually have to treat them as if they’d never existed just to function? How was he supposed to feel like he wasn’t alone now? How was he supposed to feel like he wasn’t going to die?  
How was he supposed to feel like he wasn’t going to die?  
He was left there, trembling, just like the ground did when the first Homeworld ship they’d met crashed down on the beachfront.  
By now, Bismuth was the only one left at the door, her having carried in Steven’s body- no, not his body, never his body. His Steven. The Steven he would’ve done anything for, the Steven whose smile had been the only relevant one in his life for the past seventeen years.  
She looked back at him, cast a glance to the ground, and shut the screen door behind her as she left.


End file.
